I am currently extremely interested in this situation...your feedback would be appreciated. take a minute and scan.
Freed From Captivity, (exerpts)
Japanese Return to More Pain
By NORIMITSU ONISHI, The New York Times
The three hostages' arrival in Japan was met mostly by disapproval.
TOKYO, April 22 The young Japanese civilians taken hostage in Iraq returned
home this week, not to the warmth of a yellow-ribbon embrace but to a
disapproving nation's cold stare.
Three of them, including a woman who helped street children on the streets of
Baghdad, appeared on television two weeks ago as their knife-brandishing
kidnappers threatened to slit their throats. A few days after their release, they
landed here on Sunday, in the eye of a peculiarly Japanese storm.
"You got what you deserve!" read one hand-written sign at the airport where
they landed. "You are Japan's shame," another wrote on the Web site of one of
the former hostages. They had "caused trouble" for everybody. The government,
not to be outdone, announced it would bill the former hostages $6,000 for air
fare.
Beneath the surface of Japan's ultra-sophisticated cities lie the
hierarchical ties that have governed this island nation for centuries and that, at
moments of crises, invariably reassert themselves. The former hostages' tra
nsgression was to ignore a government advisory against traveling to Iraq. But their sin, in a vertical society that likes to think of itself as classless, was to
defy what people call here "okami," or, literally, "what is higher."
Dr. Satoru Saito, a psychiatrist who examined the three former hostages twice
since their return, said the stress they were enduring now was "much heavier"
than what they experienced during their captivity in Iraq. Asked to name
their three most stressful moments, the former hostages told him, in ascending
order: the moment when they were kidnapped on their way to Baghdad, the
knife-wielding incident, and the moment they watched a television show the morning after their return here and realized Japan's anger with them.
Pursuing individual goals by defying the government and causing trouble for
Japan was simply unforgivable. But the freed hostages did get official praise
from one government: the United States.
"Well, everybody should understand the risk they are taking by going into
dangerous areas," said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. "But if nobody was
willing to take a risk, then we would never move forward. We would never move our world forward."And so I'm pleased that these Japanese citizens were willing to put themselves at risk for a greater good, for a better purpose. And the Japanese people should be very proud that they have citizens like this willing to do that."
In contrast, Yasuo Fukuda, the Japanese government's spokesman offered this
about the captives' ordeal: "They may have gone on their own but they must
consider how many people they caused trouble to because of their action."
The criticism began almost immediately after the first three civilians were
kidnapped two weeks ago. The environment minister, Yuriko Koike, blamed them
for being "reckless."
Even as the kidnappers were still threatening to burn alive the three
hostages, Yukio Takeuchi, an official in the Foreign Ministry, said of the three,
"When it comes to a matter of safety and life, I would like them to be aware of
the basic principle of personal responsibility."
Defying the okami are young Japanese people like the freed hostages,
freelancers and members of nonprofit organizations, who are traditionally held in low esteem in a country where the bigger one's company, the bigger one's social
rank. They also belong to a generation in which many have rejected traditional
Japanese life.
Some politicians proposed a law barring Japanese from traveling to dangerous countries; even more of them said that the hostages should pay the costs incurred by the government in securing their release.
"This is an idea that should be considered," The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's
biggest daily newspaper, said in an editorial. "Such an act might deter other
reckless, self-righteous volunteers."
When two freed hostages mentioned wanting to stay or return to Iraq to
continue their work, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi angrily urged them "to have
some sense."
The comment was revealing, one that would not likely be heard from the United
States government. Here, the government is now trumpeting "personal
responsibility" for those going to dangerous areas essentially saying that travelers shouldn't expect any help from the government to secure their safety or get out of trouble.
Again, no Japanese politician dared to speak out against this idea.
talice [email] said at 2:58 AM 04-26-2004: hmm, i'm glad i got to read this. . . i had read the new york times article whenever it came out and wished i knew more about Japanese culture so I could understand the situation better. thanks.
caleb said at 10:49 AM 04-26-2004: would public opinion have been different if these people had been killed? a more expected mourning the death of people trying to help the world, yada yada. or would their burials, too, still be regarded as a huge inconvenience?
not to take sides, just curious of the thought process. it's almost like the worried mom saying, "jesus, you scared the fuck outta me, don't ever do that again!" rather than "thank god you're alright."
ed [email] said at 12:58 PM 04-26-2004: I seriously doubt there wouldhave been much mourning, outside family and friends, had these people been killed. Acting without regard to one's station is seriously offensive in Japanese culture. It always has been.
kaycee incognito said at 4:26 AM 04-27-2004: My students dont really talk about it so much. Being normal, angsty, stupid, vapid, name-brand-loving
16year-olds, they dont have much on their brains except nail polish and boys and Disney characters.
i did bring it up in my Reading class, wheer the kids are pretty socially-aware. They are embarassed
for the hostages, because they feel like they should have stayed here. It is surprising to me that they
feel this way, and i asked them to explain. they gave me about the same run-down of the article...
social responsibility, respect for the governments wishes, so many other people worried about them,
that they caused a lot of trouble byt going. i pointed out, then, that if the concern was just going to
anothe rcountry, then i was in the same boat.. causung my family and friends worry, shunning my
responsibility to live in and pay taxes to America. they said it was different because Japan is safe and
i countered that if no one tried to go do good things in unsafe places, then what would happen to the
world? they expressed confusion and a reluctance to talk about it. Erina said she wanted to be proud
of their work but she didnt know what they were doing, and it wasnt in the news so much, only that
they might have faked it.
it is good to know that there is international attention being paid to this distinctly Japanese attitude. it
trulu is appaling ,a nd it has seriously made me rethink my ideas about japan as a culture and where
their values and loyalties lie. definitely NOT to anyone who goes ex=pat except to learn english.. and
definitely not to humanitarian work outside of japanese interest.
no there is no lack of news or internet.. thats just unlucky... but keep in mind that they speak, read,
andd listen to JAPANESE all day. english-speaking peopel seem to have mor eavailability to
international opinion as it doeant HAVE to come from, an dhence often fromt he opinions of, their own
country. so it makes it difficult for them to know about international opinion, especially when the news
here is extremely homogeous. even the opinion pages are a joke.
i dont know if response woul dhave been different if they had died. if they do go back though, i will tell you that most probably the response will be "i told you so" from a lot more people than i am comfortable with
josh [email] said at 10:09 AM 04-27-2004: Yeah i find this super interesting... I haven't heard this perspective of it in the news AT ALL... It's kinda creepy.
myriam said at 11:24 AM 04-27-2004: there are reports they might have faked it?
what is the media like in japan? you mention a girl who said she didn't know what they were doing over there... I actually haven't figured that out either. Is it sensitive information? Or just unreported? Do people talk about their jobs in japan?
Sorry for all the questions... this is a culture that seems so vastly different from our own that it is hard to comprehend, especially with little contact.
kenny said at 8:20 PM 04-27-2004: i was reading this other article in the nytimes the other day that kinda helped explain some stuff, it's gone to archive, but you can email it to yourself here, but like here're the bits i thought were sorta interesting:
"Of all languages in the world, Japanese is the only one that has an entirely different set of written characters to express foreign words and names. Just seeing these characters automatically tells the Japanese that they are dealing with something or someone non-Japanese.
"So foreign names, from George Bush to Saddam Hussein, are depicted in these characters, called katakana. What's more, the names of foreign citizens of Japanese ancestry are also written in this set of characters, indicating that while they may have Japanese names, they are not, well, really Japanese...
"The distinctions are sometimes difficult to draw, as they touch upon the difficult question of who is Japanese, or, rather, when does someone stop being Japanese...
"Are the criteria citizenship, blood, mastery of the Japanese language or customs? Or, in this island nation where leaving Japan has always meant leaving the village, does one start becoming non-Japanese the minute one steps off Japanese soil?
"There is a strong argument to be made for that. Children of Japanese business families stationed overseas for a few years invariably encounter problems returning here. Schoolmates often pick on them and call them gaijin, meaning foreigner or outsider. That problem has decreased in recent years, as more and more Japanese have spent time abroad. But those children are still considered to have suffered from their years overseas, in contrast to, say, an American child whose experience living abroad would usually be considered a plus."
anyway, there was part of a book by kazuo ishiguro called 'when we were orphans' that touched on that about a japanese boy growing up in shanghai in the 1930s (when japan was occupying manchuria?) and the difficulty he had being 'japanese', esp when he had to return to tokyo and 'fit in'.
Apparently a student at UMass-Amherst wrote an article (part of a two-piece pro/con thing) saying that the soldier (recently killed in action) who gave up a lucrative NFL contract to enlist in Iraq "got what was coming to him." The piece elisted tons of irate letters of protest, the university president has disavowed the comments as representative of UMass, and there is now a student group calling for the writer's resignation from the paper.
It's interesting to note that the phenomenon is pretty much diametrically opposite to what Kaycee is describing in Japan.
